Thinkbox: Portable Devices Account for 1.5 Percent of TV Viewing

LONDON: New TV viewing figures from Thinkbox reveal that 98.5 percent of television viewing is still done on the traditional TV set in the U.K., while 1.5 percent is on other screens such as tablets and mobile devices.

The average daily TV viewing in the U.K. (during January to June 2013) was 4 hours, 1 minute a day per person. This was comprised of 3 hours, 58 minutes a day of linear TV on a TV set—this is 3 minutes a day less than the same period last year—and 3 minutes, 30 seconds a day via devices such as tablets, smartphones and laptops. The majority of this is on-demand viewing, with some live streams.

Viewing on non-TV devices via established services such as ITV Player, Sky Go, 4OD and BBC iPlayer, as well as new services like Dave On-demand, accounted for 1.5 percent of overall TV viewing in the country during the first half of 2013. This is a slight increase from the full-year figure for 2012, when it accounted for 1.2 percent.

According to Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB), it’s estimated that 58 percent of households own digital TV recorders, and in these homes 83.8 percent of linear TV was watched live during the period, down from the 84.4 percent in the same period a year ago. Also, 81 percent of all timeshifted viewing is watched within two days of recording, while 47 percent is seen within 24 hours of it being recorded. BARB’s figures suggest that the growth in the amount of TV that is recorded and played back is slowing down.